“No, like you and me. We are healers.”
I go very still. I suppose the word fits, but I can’t say as I’ve ever known what I am. Refocusing, I glance at the bowl of astringent that still sits on the table nearby. It, too, has been changed, the water clear, no longer bloody.
“Ronl said you needed to see me?” I look at the stitching on her bed dress’s bodice. “Are you having difficulty?”
Lena shakes her head. “You did what the mistress who taught me would have done. I’d have helped myself in just the same way, but I didn’t have the strength.” She reaches out and touches my knee. “I cannot thank you enough. If you hadn’t come to the shop when you did…”
“It was fate.” I run a forefinger across the bairn’s chubby cheek. “And sometimes the invisible ropes that link strangers can be kind.”
Lena’s smile is luminous. “Yes.”
And then she gets serious: “But you came into the shop for your own reason, and Ronl told me the three things you asked for. You referred to them bydifferent names, but I know what they’re for—two of them you used for me. Who is hurt, you or your husband?”
“Husband? Oh, he’s not my…” As I flush, I take a deep breath and nod at my forearm. “I was… scraped. And I know that some things must be treated. But Ronl gave me soap which I have used to good effect.”
I say this more out of gratitude to her than any examination I did this morning. There was no time to check under the wrapping before I left.
“Will you let me take a look at it?”
I blink. A couple of times. In all the years I’ve treated others, never once has anybody asked after my welfare—much less cared enough to do something about it.
“Ronl?” Lena smiles as her husband reappears in the doorway. “Will you please take your daughter?”
The herbist’s husband is right and ready for the job, happily coming in and accepting a transfer. He is clearly enchanted with the infant and I contrast his warmth with the farrier’s disinterest in progeny of the so-called fairer sex.
On his way out, he closes the door most of the way, and it’s then I feel Lena’s full attention. The way she looks at me, with steady, clear-eyed regard, tells me more than any explanation involving words that she has, in fact, come through the birth well enough. She’s certainly of sufficient strength to direct her own care from this point—strong enough, too, to direct mine, apparently.
She sits up higher in her bedding. “Where are you hurt?”
Inhaling a deep breath, I undo the fastenings on the felt jacket, and I can’t hide the wince as I remove my outer layer.
“Your forearm, then?”
I nod and pull up the sleeve of the under-shirting. With care, I begin to unwrap the sheeting I’d bound it in after my bathing last night, and I have to stop halfway through. Closing my eyes, I will the pain level down so that I can continue, acutely aware that this woman beside me knows even more than I do about physical agony.
Compared to labor, this is nothing. I need to toughen up—
“Take your time,” she says softly.
Am I nodding again? I don’t know. What I do know, as I get back to the unwrapping, is this is all a very bad sign. And I can feel the heat already.
Lena lets out a gasp as the binding finally drops away, and I glance around the bedroom to avoid looking at my arm.
“How did you do this?” she asks.
“I… ah, I fell.”
“When.”
“Yesterday.”
As I risk a glance at the wound, all I can do is curse under my breath. The swelling has made the outer ring around the injury form a valley, and like the Lake of Lost Souls, the flesh in between is bad news: An infection has not just burrowed in, it’s spreading, the redness no longer localized, but running the length and circumference of the lower part of the limb.
Lena’s voice gets very no-nonsense. “You must be honest with me, if I’m to treat this properly. How did this happen?”
What does it matter, I think with exhaustion. There are lots of travelers that come through here, why would my identity be sussed out? And if it somehow were, and word traveled back north and east, would my village really have the resources to come find me?
Although Julion might. If he decided he needed to force that service he wanted from me.
